


solitude

by always_an_anxious_mess



Category: Minecraft - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Body Modification, Family Dynamics, ITS FINALLY DONE, I’m going to take a nap after posting this good night, I’m not tagging this seriously at all, Not as bad as you think its just Tommy adapts to his surroundings okay, SBI + Tubbo goes to find him after like a year, Technoblade and Wilbur Soot are twins, The graphic violence tag is only because Tommy beats the shit out of several zombies, basically: Tommy goes feral and lives in the woods, i don’t have the brain cells to do it, i refuse for tubbo’s tag to have his name in it so watch me change his tag because i will, ive spent so long on this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28340325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_an_anxious_mess/pseuds/always_an_anxious_mess
Summary: Tommy had always considered himself an extroverted person.But after Dream stopped showing up, after no more visitors appeared on his shores or from his portal, Tommy felt himself thriving in the solitude. In the isolation. Of being alone and in silence.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 105
Kudos: 1611
Collections: Completed stories I've read, Found family to make me feel something, Jester's Collection, MCYT Fic Rec





	solitude

Tommy had always considered himself an extroverted person.

He thrived on being around others. His energy came not from being alone, but by being surrounded by other human beings. He was boisterous. He was loud. He was annoying.

But after Dream stopped showing up, after no more visitors appeared on his shores or from his portal, Tommy found himself thriving in the solitude. In the isolation. Of just being alone and in silence.

The first week without Dream had been full of Tommy talking to himself and things that couldn’t respond to him. He had been desperate just to hear his own voice, to hear something except silence.

In those first days, Tommy had sat staring at his nether portal for hours on end, desperate for someone to come see him, for Dream to come back.

No one ever came.

After eight days of rambling and sitting and waiting, Tommy decided enough was enough.

And he fell silent.

This time, he relished in absence of a voice in the air. He found that the world was never truly quiet. The forest around him was alive with so many soft sounds that he’d never heard before.

Tommy decided, on the ninth day without Dream, that the ruins of Logstedshire were worthless.

So he left.

His feet carried him deep into the woods, filled with a determination to keep listening to the noises around him.

He didn’t want to ever stop listening to those sounds. He knew that he had to stay alive, even if it was just to hear rabbits scampering across the grass, the breeze blowing softly through the leaves, the fluttering of birds’ wings as they hopped from tree to tree.

Tommy found a shallow cave a few days into his trek in the forest. It was not very large, jutting out from a cliff that couldn’t have been more than ten feet tall. But it was hidden by vines and ancient trees.

The inside wasn’t big at all, and he found no resources inside other than a small coal vein. The cave was, by Tommy’s estimations, twelve feet by ten feet, with the ceiling only a foot above Tommy’s head.

After he mined the coal out, there was a ledge waist high carved into the wall. When laying down on it, he found that it fit him perfectly.

He made this his home.

Tommy sheared sheep of their wool and used a loom to weave himself clothes and bedding. He dug a fire pit by the entrance of the cave, far enough away from the mouth in order to prevent rain from putting it out, but close enough to allow smoke to escape easily. He tried cutting down trees to gather wood, but found the noise so loud and startling that it threw him off for hours. Instead, he would climb trees and cut off branches, and found this to be a much better alternative.

There was stream nearby that he would take water from, and it lead into a shallow pond that he would clean up at if the layer of dirt that was always present on him nowadays got to be too much. Or if he just smelled particularly bad one morning and felt like bathing.

As days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, Tommy grew to love the forest and its soft noises. Anything loud startled him now, especially his voice, so he didn’t use his voice.

His shoes were too loud on the forest floor. He kept scaring away animals when he was trying to hunt. So he forwent shoes, instead wrapping strips of wool around his sole and heels to protect them as he walked. If it got too cold, then he’d put the shoes back on, but on the warm days he went without them.

It was surprisingly easy to sustain himself out in the woods, even during winter when both edible plants and game became scarce. Going hungry was something he had to get used to, but it didn’t take long to become normalized to soft hunger pains.

Hunting was done predominantly with a bow and arrows he crafted himself. Tommy had become an excellent shot in his time spent out in the woods. It was necessary skill, as prey doesn’t exactly let you walk up to it and stab it.

Hunting also gave him a lot of exercise, from walking miles in the woods nearly every day to hauling back what he’d shot all those miles back to his house. Especially if he managed to bring down a deer. Those little shits were ANYTHING but little, they were heavy.

Mobs were a constant problem. A creeper exploding nearby would be so loud that it would throw Tommy off routine for hours. The forest floor was dark enough for zombies and skeletons to be shaded from the sun, therefore they didn’t burn. It was safe to say, he got lots of combat practice.

As months passed, Tommy could pick up on the quietest noises from far distances. He could hear water trickling from the stream from his cave, even though the stream was a good five minute walk from the cave. He could hear a skeleton draw its bow from a hundred feet away. He could hear mice skittering across the leaves if he had sat still enough for them to come within twenty feet of him.

He didn’t look at his reflection much, but he did see it in the pond one particular day. His ears had lengthened without his notice, now long and pointed. Longer than Techno’s or Wilbur’s, that was for sure, but shorter than Ranboo’s, who had very long ears.

His newly pointed ears moved too, he figured out. It was subconscious, but he was aware enough to notice that his ears swiveled towards noise. Perked up when he was listening for something. Flattened when he was in danger.

Tommy had heard of environments changing people over time, people adapting and evolving to their surroundings much faster than regular animals did. That had happened to Phil in the Antarctic Empire, his dad had grown antlers for some reason. Phil also had wings, but he had explained when they were children that he was born with wings, so only the antlers had grown unexpectedly.

Despite the strangeness, his ears morphing the way they had proved to help him a lot. He could hear arrows from skeletons flying at him now. He could hear the hissing of creepers from dozens of feet away. Hunting was almost laughably easy.

So in the end, despite how odd it was to have evolved so rapidly in such a way, Tommy didn’t have a problem with his new ears.

He had eventually taken to hunting from the trees, finding it easier to hide from prey when he was off the ground.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that one day, he woke up to a tail.

The tail was whip thin, with a tuft of fur on the end. It improved his balance greatly, whether on the forest floor, in the trees, or climbing up the cliff that his home was dug into. He wasn’t complaining.

Tommy tried his best not to think about everyone from his past. The nightmares were enough, waking him up early in the mornings with a cold sweat and whimpers passing his lips. The first few days in the forest he had screamed himself awake. But now, as he used his voice less and less, he’d get soft, quiet guttural whines and whimpers when he awoke from them.

His disks, once so important to him, were left forgotten in a chest. He hadn’t looked at them for months. He’d only played them once, finding their music to be too loud and jarring, so he put them away.

His compass as well was abandoned in that same chest. He hadn’t taken it out to look at it in months. It pointed to the other compass, the one that Ghostbur had given Tubbo, but that compass was gone. Dream had said that Tubbo burned it. So his “Your Tubbo” was completely useless. He only kept it around for sentimentality’s sake.

In his waking hours, Tommy didn’t think about his past. He had more pressing issues to deal with, such as mobs and hunting/foraging. If he took out his barely contained anger on the mobs around him with his axe, that was his business. It wasn’t like anyone was around to judge him anyways.

With his diet mostly consisting of meat and very minimal plants that he knew for a fact wouldn’t kill him, he wasn’t particularly surprised that he grew fangs.

So, a tail, pointed ears (that came with super hearing, apparently), and fangs. Huh.

Despite the strangeness of his situation, Tommy didn’t complain about these added features. He’d spent the better part of a year in this forest, and it had been nothing but kind to him. He’d arrived in this forest in winter, and he stayed through spring and summer, and now it was autumn. The forest was beautiful in autumn.

He’d woken up that morning with plans to hunt. He knew that he could smoke the game he caught in order to preserve it for longer, and once the snow came, he could store it outside in a locked chest, which would keep it cold and prevent predators from finding it. He had to hunt now, when there were plenty of animals about, so that way he could make it through winter.

Last year, winter had been harsh. He’d arrived in the forest when most everything was already in hibernation, and snow had covered the ground so that he couldn’t forage for anything. What little he managed to catch would get stolen by predators when he left it out to keep.

Eventually, he’d caught the thief. A lone cougar that prowled the woods at night.

Somehow he had scared it off. He would only realize later how he’d done it.

He’d encountered the cougar only a month or two into his isolation, before his ears had grown or his tail had shown up or his fangs had popped in. But he had made a deep rumbling noise in his chest and throat.

A growl.

A warning.

A challenge.

The cougar had ran off with its tail between its legs. It never stole from him again.

Tommy woke up that day in autumn on his ledge, as he usually did. Soft whimpers escaped from him as he shook away the remains of a nightmare that he couldn’t quite remember.

He untangled himself from his bedding, wadding up the blankets and laying them at the end of the little niche he slept in. Tommy slipped off the ledge, grabbing his bow and quiver from the ground as his tail flicked lazily back and forth.

His ears perked as he listened for any mobs outside his cave. Once he was satisfied that the nearest mob (a skeleton) was at least a hundred feet or more away, he kept moving.

He slid over to his chests and opened one, ignoring the compass and disks that lay inside in favor of considering his shoes. He absentmindedly wiggled his toes against the stone, the chill of the air nipping at his heels.

Tommy decided against the shoes. The air wasn’t cold enough yet for him to be worried.

He slung the quiver of arrows across his back, but left the bow in his hand. He grabbed a canteen of water he had boiled last night as well as his axe and hooked them both through his belt loops before starting off.

He trekked through the forest for a couple of miles, ears swiveling towards every soft noise. The mobs that got in his way were dispatched quickly and quietly with the experience Tommy had in doing so silently.

That’s when he heard something that was distinctly not an animal.

From not far away, only two hundred feet, give or take.

And it was coming his way.

Tommy stuck the handle of his bow between his teeth and dug his fingers into the bark of a nearby tree, hauling himself up with practiced ease. His tail thrashed to keep him balanced as he perched precariously on a wide set branch, ears straining.

“Can’t we take a break? We’ve been walking for hours,” a voice in the distance. A voice. A VOICE. A voice that was too loud. A voice that meant someone was in his forest. Someone other than him.

“No, we’re close, I can feel it,” someone else responded. Two people in his forest other than him.

“We’ve been following that stupid compass for hours,” a third voice, deeper than the other two. “We don’t even know if he’s alive. It’s been almost year since anyone’s seen him. As far as we know, some thief or animal found the compass and carried it all the way out here.”

All three of these voices were loud. Much too loud. They were throwing Tommy off, interrupting his silence. But most of all, these voices were FAMILIAR. People he knew. People he didn’t want to see.

Tommy spotted movement, and a second later, his suspicions were confirmed as four people he recognized but never wanted to see again picked their way through his woods. Their footsteps were loud, reminding him of the animals he hunted. He shook away that mindset.

Tubbo was in the lead, clutching a shimmering compass that was tied around his neck. His presidential uniform was nowhere in sight. The boy instead wore a dark green sweater with pants and boots.

Techno was a step behind, his hair long and braided back as usual. His hair wasn’t completely pink, instead its natural dark brown that faded to pink in an ombré. Other than that, his brother was unchanged, still wearing his ridiculous royal attire that was blue themed instead of red.

Wilbur was also there, not floating or transparent, but actually standing there like he wasn’t dead. His hair was tied into a low ponytail, and he wore a trenchcoat over a thin long sleeve shirt instead of the yellow sweater he’d worn when Tommy had seen him last.

Phil seemed unchanged. He wore an outfit similar to Techno’s, with room for his wings in the back. His antlers had grown longer since Tommy had seen him last.

Tommy silently drew an arrow from his quiver and notched it, drawing back the string and closing one eye.

He inhaled.

And exhaled, releasing the arrow in the same breath.

The arrow thudded into the tree trunk Tommy had been aiming for, missing Tubbo by inches and thudding into the wood.

Tubbo yelped, leaving Tommy’s ears ringing at the loud noise.

“Skeleton,” Phil drew a sword, and so did Techno. The group paused, looking around for a mob that wasn’t there.

After a few moments, Techno narrowed his eyes and plucked the arrow from the tree, holding it up to his nose.

“This doesn’t smell like a skeleton,” Techno rumbled thoughtfully.

Tommy narrowed his eyes, silently cursing himself. How had he forgotten? Techno and Wilbur both had an incredible sense of smell.

And the compass Tubbo was holding... Dream had said Tubbo had burned it. But clearly he hadn’t. It was the only thing that could possibly have revealed where he was to them.

That is, if he was truly who they were looking for.

Why else would they be out here, if not looking for him?

The compasses pointed to each other. His compass was in his chest, in the cave. If they kept following where the compass pointed, they’d be able to find out where he was staying.

He had to get his compass. He had to move it.

Tommy waited for the four of them to start moving again before he slunk out of the tree, silently and out of their line of sight. As soon as his feet were on the ground, he was flying through the forest.

He had to get to his cave before they did.

This was his forest. Tommy had the advantage here. He knew the terrain. They didn’t. From the angle they were coming from, they were going to walk straight off the cliff his cave was buried into.

His feet hardly touched the ground, his tail lashing back and forth as he ran with the practiced grace of someone who knew where they were going. He slid down hills, scrambled up rocks, weaved between trees with a familiarity that made a smile rise to his face.

This was HIS forest.

It didn’t take Tommy long to make it to his cave, though he could hear that the others weren’t far away.

He ducked into his cave, opening the chest and snatching out the compass before leaving just as quickly.

Tommy took a sharp right, and heard a confused shout from Tubbo as the needle on his compass surely spun. He slipped behind a tree to catch his breath, his breath coming in soft, nearly silent pants.

“The needle moved,” he could hear Tubbo saying from not far away. “But... so suddenly. It hasn’t moved this whole time, but it has now.”

“He must know we’re here,” Techno responded. “He knows we’re looking for him and what we’re using to track him. Which means he’s seen us but didn’t show himself. He’s trying to draw us away from where he’s staying by moving his compass.”

“Tommy?” Phil called. “Tommy can you hear us?”

Tommy didn’t respond.

“Please, we’re not going to hurt you! We just want to know you’re okay!” Wilbur also shouted.

Tommy’s ears were ringing with how loud they were being, and he shook his head trying to be rid of it.

“Tommy, I’m sorry!” Tubbo sounded closer than the others. They were moving now, Tommy could hear their footsteps. “Please come out. Everyone’s been worried!”

“Dream’s dead,” Techno rumbled. “He’s gone. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

Tommy peeked from behind the tree, thankfully finding no one in his direction. He notched an arrow and aimed, inhale, exhale—shoot.

The arrow embedded in the ground by Techno’s feet. On purpose, of course. Tommy could bring down a deer from a hundred feet away with one arrow. If he had actually been aiming for Techno, he would have hit him.

“Either this skeleton is a terrible shot, or Tommy’s trying to tell us to go away,” Techno sounded amused, and Tommy spotted him picking the arrow up to examine it.

“Can’t you follow his trail using the arrow?” Tubbo asked.

Techno sniffed it experimentally, and Wilbur leaned over to sniff it too. They both paused for a moment, before shrugging.

“He smells like everything else in this damn forest,” Wilbur sighed. “He’s clearly spent a lot of time here. We’d need something stronger than arrow to find him.”

“I’m not leaving until we do,” Tubbo said stubbornly.

“Have you considered that he doesn’t want to be found?” Techno asked, twirling the arrow between his fingertips. “He knows we’re here. He’s probably watching and listening to us right now. We’re in his domain here, I highly doubt we’ll be able to find him unless he allows us to. He’s the hunter here, and we’re the prey. I know you think it’s the other way around, but it isn’t. He can have us running around in circles if he wanted to, because he knows this forest better than we do.”

Tommy grinned to himself, ducking behind the tree again. He could absolutely do that and he knew it.

“I can’t give up on him,” Tubbo snapped. “If he really is alive, I can’t live with myself knowing he’s out here. Alone.”

“None of us can,” Phil interjected. “That’s why we have to find him.”

Techno sighed. “Where does the compass point to?”

Tommy took this as a sign that it was time to leave. He darted out from behind the tree, wincing at the cry of surprise from Wilbur. He bolted away, as silently as he could in the fallen leaves.

“I think I saw him! This way!” Wilbur shouted, making Tommy’s ears ring. God, why were they so loud?

Once again, his feet barely touched the ground as he dashed through the forest with practiced ease. He couldn’t outrun Techno, that much he knew. But he could lose them with his knowledge of where everything was.

Especially with where he was leading them.

While Tommy was near-silent in his sprint through the forest, the other four were anything but. They called his name, begging for him to stop and listen. Their footsteps were heavy and they seemed to snap every twig, kick through every leaf on the forest floor.

His ears were hurting, so he pressed them flat to try and block out the noise, but it didn’t do anything. The sounds they made were so loud it was painful, almost as painful as creeper explosions or trees falling.

After several minutes, he finally got to the part of the forest he was looking for. This was the section of forest that was the oldest, with huge trees that climbed many many feet into the sky. There was the same stream that was near his cave, but about a mile upstream from his cave, so they weren’t too close to it.

Tommy could hear them slowing down, but he still had energy. Techno couldn’t be too far behind at this point, but he didn’t allow himself to check to see how far behind he was.

He darted between two close growing trees, pausing only for a moment to drop his compass in between them, before sliding down the hill and throwing himself into the water with a splash that was soft enough he knew they wouldn’t hear it.

Tommy only allowed himself a brief moment of rest before crossing the stream completely and sitting on the bank. He immediately got to work, sticking his hands in mud and wiping it across his neck and face, smearing it on the front of his shirt as well.

He could only hope that it was enough to hide his scent from Techno and Wilbur.

Once that was done, he went back into the tree line, pulling himself into one of the ancient oaks. He straddled one of its branches about thirty feet up, listening.

“He dropped the fucking compass!” Tubbo yelled, making Tommy wince even from thirty feet in the air and at least a hundred feet away. He could barely make out their shapes through the leaves, but he saw Phil pacing angrily.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Wilbur asked. “Tommy’s not an idiot. He knew we were looking for him using Tubbo’s compass, so he got rid of his own compass.”

“I’m surrounded by idiots,” Techno groaned. “Gimme that.”

There were a few quiet sniffs, from Techno no doubt. Phil had stopped pacing by now too.

“There’s a scent trail,” Techno announced, and he heard them immediately start moving. They passed underneath him, and Tommy held his breath, but no one looked up.

They walked right past him for the stream, both Techno and Wilbur had their noses in the air. They looked fucking ridiculous and Tommy probably would have made fun of them if their situation had been different.

“FUCK!” Tommy heard only a few seconds later, and a grin split his face despite the spike of pain that went through his ears.

“That kid is too fucking smart,” he heard Techno grumble. “He disguised his scent so I can’t follow him. I miss when he was still arrogant and stupid.”

Tommy bristled. He wasn’t stupid.

“What can we do now?” Tubbo asked. “What are we supposed to fucking do? He got rid of the compass. We’re in his territory here. He disguised his scent. We have no way of tracking him now.”

“I told you this wouldn’t work,” Techno pointed out. “I told you.”

“This isn’t the time for “I told you so”,” Phil snapped. “We have to find Tommy.”

“How do you propose we do that exactly?” Techno sniped back. “We have no clue how to find him.”

Before they could argue further, Tommy heard a disgruntled “HEY” as well as the sounds of struggle.

“I smelled this earlier,” Wilbur hummed, and Tommy heard someone sniffing. Probably Wilbur. “I think... I can follow his trail using the compass.”

“The trail ends here,” Techno snapped.

“No, earlier. Before we started chasing him. I smelled something like this,” Wilbur protested. “Maybe we can find it again.”

“I’d be surprised if we can even find our way OUT of the woods at this point,” a loud thump echoed through the forest with Techno’s words.

Tommy shrugged to himself. He didn’t actually care if they got out or not. As long as they left him alone.

Satisfied that they wouldn’t be able to find him at this point, Tommy scrambled down from the tree with a soft sigh. He hadn’t been able to hunt anything, and with Phil, Tubbo, Techno, and Wilbur stomping around, he highly doubted he’d find anything today before nightfall. It was probably best to just go home and try again tomorrow.

Caught up in thoughts and his ears still ringing slightly from how loud the past hour had been, he hadn’t noticed the soft hissing of a creeper.

Until it was too late.

His eyes widened and his hand found his axe right as—

**BOOM**

Tommy was thrown backwards, narrowly missing the tree he had been in and landing in some undergrowth with a crash. His hands immediately cradled his ears as a fierce stabbing pain ran through them, worse than it had ever been.

A guttural scream tore its way out of his throat, only hurting his ears further as Tommy curled into a fetal position, choked noises and loud whimpers escaping his lips. He was singed slightly from the explosion, and he had landed hard enough to bruise, but his ears. Fuck, his ears.

His ears hurt so bad. The ringing was so loud. He could still hear but it was so so so painful.

Fuck, it hurt so bad.

The last time a creeper had exploded near him was months ago. It hadn’t even hurt this bad then, even though his ears had been pointed.

He squinted his eyes open, trembling from the pain. Through blurry vision, he could see four figures. Phil, Techno, Wilbur, Tubbo.

No. He’d been doing so well. They weren’t supposed to find him. No.

Before they could come any closer, Tommy forced himself up into a sitting position quickly, drawing his bow and aiming it for Techno. He ignored the way his hands shook, the way blood stained his palms from where he’d covered his ears.

“Tommy, we’re not going to hurt you,” Phil said softly, but it still pained Tommy. His father took a step forward, and found himself at the end of the arrow as Tommy shifted his aim.

His tail was lashing back and forth, both from fear and anger. His ears were pressed flat, and he was sure that blood trickled down them. He bared his fangs in warning, tears running down his cheeks from the intense pain.

“Tommy-” Tubbo pleaded, but was cut off as a sharp growl came from Tommy. It was the same one he’d used on the cougar all those months ago. A warning. A challenge.

The meaning was clear. Don’t come any closer.

Tommy was a wounded animal. A cornered, wounded animal. One that was not afraid to bite.

“We heard the creeper explosion,” Techno said quietly, and Tommy’s gaze flicked to him with narrowed eyes. “Your ears, they must be pretty sensitive to sound now. The explosion must have hurt a lot.”

Tommy didn’t answer, just growling again in warning. No one attempted to step towards him.

“Can you hear us, Tommy?” Techno asked softly, a tone of voice Tommy had never heard from his brother before.

He debated answering for a moment, before jerking his head down and up in a crude version of a nod.

He didn’t lower his bow for a moment though, keeping an eye on all four of them. Well, Wilbur probably wasn’t a threat now. He might not look transparent anymore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dead. You can’t bring people back to life. Everyone knew that.

“Hey Tommy, can you let one of us come near you, please?” Phil asked gently. “No swords, we promise. Just one of us.”

Tommy made a small grunting noise in his throat, scratchy and hoarse. His gaze flicked between them.

Wilbur was dead. Wilbur was a ghost. Wilbur couldn’t hurt him. Wilbur.

He made eye contact with Wilbur and made a high pitched noise in his throat, similar to a growl, but not as deep.

“He’s giving you permission,” Phil whispered towards Wilbur, who blinked in surprise.

Tommy also blinked, eyes widening and then narrowing once more. How had Phil known that? That’s what he’d meant, yes, but he’d never made that noise before, especially not in front of them. How had Phil known?

Wilbur hesitated, before stepping forward, eyes locked with Tommy’s. When Tommy didn’t react, he took another step.

Wilbur approached Tommy one step at a time, pausing between each one to make sure that he was still okay to go forward.

When Wilbur was less than ten feet away, Tommy growled as he tried to take another step, shifting his body away from Wilbur’s. Wilbur paused, eyeing Tommy, before trying to take the step again.

There was another growl, this time loud enough to make Tommy’s ears hurt even worse even though he was the one making it.

“Wilbur stop,” Phil said warningly.

Wilbur, to his credit, didn’t try to take a step forward again. Instead, like the dumbass he was, he reached forward to try to touch Tommy’s hand, to push the bow down.

Even though Tommy knew in the back of his head that Wilbur couldn’t touch him, and therefore he couldn’t hurt him, his first instincts were to lash out.

You see, Tommy was a wounded animal. Wounded animals tend to bite.

And bite he did.

Tommy snarled and lunged, sinking his fangs into Wilbur’s hand so sharply that he tasted blood. He was frankly startled. He thought he’d go straight through him, because Wilbur was DEAD. HE WAS A GHOST. But he didn’t, and blood coated his tongue. It tasted disgusting.

Wilbur shrieked in pain, loud enough and shrill enough that Tommy’s ears throbbed and pulsed and a new wave of tears came over him. He immediately let go, whimpering loudly and dropping his bow in order to clamp his hands over his ears.

Fuck. Fuck. It hurt so bad.

He wasn’t sure when he fell over, but he was laying among the leaves once more. A particularly sharp tree root was digging into his side, hard enough to bruise but not hard enough to cut skin. His knees were pulled up against his chest in the fetal position, and his tail was tucked between his legs.

He was trembling like a leaf, gagging at the coppery taste of blood in his mouth and the saltiness of his tears. He was biting down on his tongue so hard that he was pretty sure he was bleeding from it, but he couldn’t tell because blood was already in his mouth beforehand.

It hurt. It hurt so much everything was too loud. He desperately wanted to go back to this morning, wake up and go hunting and everything just being quiet. Please let this just be another nightmare. Please.

Someone was touching him. Resting a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Tommy jerked away, scrambling to his feet and baring his teeth in warning. Phil, the one who had been touching him, also stood up, raising his hands in surrender and backing away.

Tubbo was helping Wilbur with his hand, but it was obvious that they hadn’t brought any medical supplies with them. Techno was watching him with narrowed eyes, making sure he didn’t lunge to attack Phil next.

With his hands still clamped over his ears and his bow still on the ground, Tommy was not in the best position to run. Especially since he wouldn’t be able to listen for mobs if any decided to pop out again, like another creeper, if his ears were hurting this bad.

He was stuck. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t fight. What was he supposed to do?

Wilbur was alive. Tommy had bit him, and he BLED. He was solid and there and real and— how was he real? How was he alive? How? Ghostbur had been transparent, and they couldn’t touch each other, and he didn’t bleed. But Wilbur was solid, Tommy had been able to touch him, to make him bleed.

Wilbur’s blood was in his mouth. Somehow, he’d forgotten, but he remembered now. Human blood tasted so much worse than animal blood. Tommy would know, considering he’s had both in his mouth at one point or another.

He doubled over and spat the blood out of his mouth, coughing, in an attempt to be rid of the taste. He knew that it wasn’t going to go away, that’s not how it works. But damn, he was going to try.

He removed his hands from his ears gingerly, worried for a moment, but sighing with relief when no noise sent spikes of pain through them. He wiped the blood and spit from his chin, coughing again.

When Tommy straightened back up, he ignored the worried looks of Phil and Tubbo. His gaze instead zeroed in on Wilbur, who was still clutching his bleeding hand close to his chest.

Wilbur met his gaze unflinchingly, even though the wound in his hand was because of him.

A soft high pitched chirping noise that reminded him of a cat caught Tommy’s attention. His ears twitched, but the noise didn’t hurt them as he turned towards the source, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

Phil was staring right at him, not having moved at all. “Are you alright?” He asked quietly, and Tommy’s ears twitched again. Still, though, the noise wasn’t hurting them.

Tommy snorted, his ears twitching and his tail removing itself from between his legs.

“I know you want us to leave,” Phil said, his voice barely above a whisper. Tommy snorted again, raising an eyebrow at him. Phil continued as if nothing happened. “But you’re hurt. Wilbur’s hurt. And as you can imagine, we may have gotten lost chasing you around.”

Techno grunted, and one of Tommy’s ears twitched in his direction, but he didn’t look at him. Techno could pretend all he wanted, but he knew that the four of them were lost.

“Will you please just show us the way out?” Phil continued. “We’ll leave, but we need your help to get out.”

“Like hell!” Wilbur snapped, loud enough for Tommy to wince and flatten his ears. “I’m not leaving! We spent all this time looking for him, I’ll be damned if we just leave.”

“Wilbur-” Phil started, louder than before, only to get cut off by Tubbo.

“Everybody shut it, you’re hurting him,” Tubbo whispered fiercely, and Tommy blinked, his tail stilling from where it had been thrashing back and forth practically nonstop.

He could feel his ears moving, perking and then resting, perking and then resting, over and over again. He wasn’t sure why.

His gaze flicked to his bow, then to Techno, then to Phil (who was the closest to him), and then to the forest canopy above. The light was far enough down into the trees that he could imagine that it was just after noon. Nowhere near enough time to bring them to the edge of the forest before nightfall.

His tail flicked, and he felt annoyance flare up in him. A burst of air passed his lips in a small chuffing sound, and he grimaced before glancing back at the four of them.

His eyes locked with Phil’s, and he made the chuffing noise again.

Phil just seemed confused, and Tommy repeated the noise once more, this time very pointedly looking between the bow at Phil’s feet and then back at him, tilting his head. He raised his eyebrows for emphasis, but Phil still didn’t seem to be getting it.

Tommy sighed frustratedly, and raised a finger to point at him before jerking it forward, his head following the motion with an annoyed look.

This time, Phil seemed to understand, backing away from the bow several feet.

Once Tommy was satisfied with the distance, he moved near-silently forward and grabbed the bow, slinging it across his back.

He turned and started walking towards the stream, only pausing when he realized there wasn’t any footsteps following him.

His head swiveled and he raised his eyebrows questioningly, finding the four of them unmoving where they were. A soft high pitched noise, similar to the one Phil had made earlier, came from him. They still didn’t move.

Tommy sighed and turned, extending a hand towards them even though the four of them were much too far away to reach him. He jerked his head to the side, in the direction of the stream and raised his eyebrows again, tail flicking in annoyance.

Follow.

That’s what he was trying to say. He knew his vocal cords wouldn’t form the word correctly, and he didn’t bother trying.

Follow.

They just kept staring at him, and Tommy rolled his eyes. He just turned and kept walking, looking back every now and then and finding them STILL not following.

He stopped once more after only a few steps. His throat vibrated and he made a deeper chuffing sound, a louder one.

Follow.

Phil seemed to understand, eyes brightening as he took a few wary steps forward.

Tommy gave him a nod of approval, repeating the deep chuffing sound before turning back around and resuming his trek towards the stream. This time, even though their loudness was unwelcome, he was pleased to hear four pairs of footsteps following him.

Techno’s were the quietest, unsurprisingly. Wilbur’s were the loudest. Phil walked with a heavy tread, and Tubbo was light on his feet but also stepped on every single leaf and stick on the ground.

Once they reached the stream, Tommy stopped and bent down to wash the mud off his face. The mud was still relatively wet, so it didn’t take much. The layer of dirt underneath it though, he didn’t even bother trying to get it off right then. They had to move.

He stood back up to find Techno cupping the rushing water between his hands.

A shrill sound that hurt Tommy’s ears came from his own throat. A warning call. Techno immediately glanced up.

Tommy pointed at the stream and shook his head. Instead, he unclipped his still mostly full canteen from his belt and placed it on the ground by his feet, backing up from it. After a second of staring, Techno picked up the canteen and opened it.

“The water makes you sick?” Tubbo guessed.

Tommy nodded. He himself hadn’t been affected by it, but he had seen animals who were. He’d been smart, always boiling his water first. When he bathed at the pond, he never submerged himself, only scrubbing the dirt off from the shore and then leaving.

“Well, you just saved us a lot of trouble,” Phil commented.

“I saw you splashing your face, so I assumed. Thanks for the warning,” Techno nodded at Tommy approvingly, who shrugged. Techno took a few gulps of the canteen and then recapped it.

Techno held out the canteen, and Tommy stared at him for a moment, before shakily taking the canister back, nearly flinching when their hands touched briefly. As soon as Techno let go of the bottle, Tommy skittered away until he was a comfortable twenty feet from him.

Tommy shook himself slightly, before he held out the canteen again, glancing towards Wilbur, Tubbo, and Phil. He was silently asking if they wanted any.

They all declined, though both Phil and Tubbo had big, dumb, happy smiles on their faces as if him offering them safe water to drink had proven something.

Tommy rolled his eyes, and turned to follow the water downstream, hopping down rocks and uncaring if he walked through the muddy banks. The four began to follow him again.

Their journey downstream was taking a long time, longer than Tommy was used to or comfortable with. The sun was sliding downwards, slanting through the trees and bathing the forest in a golden light. Nightfall would be soon. Night meant more monsters.

As they walked, Tommy would have to pause and wait for them to catch up repeatedly, growing more and more annoyed as time went on and as the air got colder. They were nearing where Tommy wanted them to go, but if he had been on his own, he would’ve gotten there ages ago.

“You’re just so fast,” Tubbo panted as they drew closer to the end of their time by the stream. Soon Tommy would lead them away from it and show them where they needed to be, at least for the night.

“He’s been out here for almost a year, and he’s adapted to living out here,” Phil explained.

“That doesn’t mean he can’t SLOW DOWN,” Wilbur complained.

Tommy just glared at him, exasperated and tail lashing.

“That’s a familiar look,” Techno sounded amused. “Though a bit unnerving when you don’t actually scream at him like you used to.”

Tommy shrugged, tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for them to catch up. He was about a hundred feet away, and he was at the point to cross. Tubbo and Wilbur were slower than Techno and Phil, only because Techno and Phil were more used to traversing the woods than they were.

Finally, the fucking slowpokes made their way to him, and Tommy promptly crossed the stream, wading through the knee high water and hopping onto the other bank. This side was less muddy, thankfully.

He ignored their grumbles of protest at getting wet as Tommy glanced towards where the sunlight was coming from, finding it lower in the sky than he’d like.

He glanced back at them, chuffing impatiently. He was getting more and more vocal the more time he spent around them. Despite how much Tommy liked the silence, he wouldn’t admit that he liked the noises he made. They were a nice break from the quiet.

The four of them were much louder than he was, though, and it annoyed him a bit.

“We’re coming,” Phil reassured him, shoving Wilbur forward, who’d been the most vocal about not wanting to be wet.

Not fast enough.

Tommy flicked his tail back and forth, waiting until they’d hauled themselves up onto the shore before he started moving again.

This terrain was easier to traverse, but he was still moving faster than Phil, Techno, Wilbur, or Tubbo were. What was normally a five minute walk was becoming closer to ten, maybe even fifteen. But finally, finally, his cliff, his cave was in sight.

It was still partially hidden, so the others had no idea that this is where he was guiding them. They probably had no idea the cave was even there.

“Uh, Tommy,” Tubbo said, stopping Tommy short and making him turn around. “That’s a cliff.”

Tommy blinked, glancing between the cliff and Tubbo, before an amused series of breaths left him. Not quite a laugh, but probably a remnant of one.

He just jerked his head towards it and kept walking.

“Listen, I know you can probably climb a cliff just fine,” Wilbur interjected, and Tommy heard him speed up to try and catch him. “But you’re really overestimating our abilities here. I still have holes in my hand, remember?”

Tommy just let out those series of amused breaths again.

“He’s laughing at you,” Phil informed them.

“This isn’t a joke!” Wilbur insisted.

“Oh,” Techno hummed. “He’s not making us climb the cliff.”

“What?” Tubbo asked.

Tommy turned and grinned, stopping just before the camouflaged entrance to the cave.

He just tilted his head slightly and walked into the cave without another word.

“Oh!” Tubbo said excitedly.

Tommy just shook his head, knowing he was out of sight of his brothers. He opened one of his chests, finding a flint and steel inside. There were still some coals and wood in the fire pit, so it didn’t take very long to start a fire and nurse it until it was a good size.

At this point, he was moving with muscle memory, half forgetting about the fact there were others with him.

He took a stone pot he had carved, finding it already full of water he had meant to boil last night. Whatever. He put the lid on it and set the pot into the coals.

That’s when he realized... he was alone in the cave.

Tommy let out a confused, high pitched noise, going back to the entrance of the cave and poking his head out with a questioning look.

The four of them were still fucking standing out there. How dumb WERE they? It was going to be dark soon!

He rolled his eyes and stepped out of the cave, away from the entrance, before gesturing towards with an annoyed look on his face. If he could talk, or wanted to talk, he would be saying: “get in the fucking cave you idiots”, but he couldn’t.

“Oh, we weren’t sure if... if you wanted us to...” Tubbo rocked back and forth on his feet, but Techno just brushed past him and went into the cave.

Once they saw that Tommy wasn’t stopping Techno, the other three also went into the cave. Tommy snorted at how ridiculously hard it was to just get them to go inside.

His ears twitched, listening for nearby mobs. There weren’t any, thankfully. The sun was still in the sky, though probably not for long.

Tommy made his way to the locked stone chest he kept his game in and opened it, pulling out strips of rabbit that weren’t particularly old. He called it rabbit jerky, and it actually tasted quite good, at least to him.

He pulled out what was at least two rabbits worth of meat, resolving himself to make up for it in the morning.

Tommy went back inside the cave, finding them all standing around awkwardly as if they weren’t sure where to go.

He sighed, nudging his head towards the fire.

Once they were all sat down by it, he passed out the rabbit jerky, not noticing that he was letting them take it from his hands without flinching.

He took his canteen and used some of the water from it to wash the grease off his hands. He had a few other canisters of already boiled water about, so he didn’t have to worry about using it all. In fact, he slid a couple of those canisters towards them to drink if they wanted.

Tommy opened his chests, searching for some clean strips of wool or something to use as a bandage for Wilbur’s hand.

He did end up finding some, so he slipped the chest closed quietly. Tommy at first was going to wrap Wilbur’s hand himself, but then he realized EXACTLY how close he would have to be in order to do that.

The cave wasn’t very large, and the four of them were probably less than ten feet from him at any given point.

A shiver ran down Tommy’s spine, and he just straightened up and held out the fabric towards Wilbur, refusing to make eye contact. He didn’t even look up as Wilbur took it, only snatching his hand away once the wool was gone.

Tommy climbed into his little nook where he slept and sat, staring at the four of them as he chewed on some of the rabbit jerky he grabbed for himself. They were eating as well, thankfully.

“So uh, not that I’m complaining,” Wilbur said after they’d eaten in silence for a while. “But I thought you were showing us the way out.”

Tommy hummed, trying to think of a way to communicate what he wanted to tell them effectively. He eventually settled for the same shrill warning call he’d used earlier to stop Techno from drinking unboiled water from the stream.

“Danger?” Phil echoed, tilting his head.

Tommy blinked, surprised that Phil had guessed correctly. That’s what he’d been trying to communicate. That taking them to the forest’s edge would be dangerous because of it being night time.

“How’d you know that?” Tubbo asked Phil.

Phil laughed, sounding unsure. “I... I don’t know. It’s like... what comes to mind first. Without even thinking about it. I just heard him, and then “danger” popped up. Is that what you meant?” He asked Tommy.

Tommy nodded.

“You did that earlier too,” Techno told Phil. “When he was making noises at Wilbur. You said he was giving him permission, like you knew what he was trying to say.”

Tommy nodded again, humming as his tail curled on the ledge next to him, flicking up and down absentmindedly.

“Well he was, weren’t you?” Phil asked Tommy, who blinked as an idea came to him. Well, less of an idea and more of a theory. “You were giving him permission. I don’t know, it’s like I just knew somehow.”

“You also knew he was laughing at us when you was just breathing a little louder than normal,” Tubbo pointed out.

“He was though!” Phil argued. “I mean, I think he was. Right?”

Tommy didn’t respond, but he did slide off his niche and nervously take a few steps until he was crouched in front of Phil. Phil hadn’t moved, but Tommy could tell he was trying not to smile at the fact this was the closest Tommy had gotten to any of them willingly.

Tommy reached forward and gently tapped the antlers that poked through Phil’s hat. Phil blinked in surprise as Tommy then tapped his ears, twitching them for emphasis, and then his own lips, maintaining eye contact to see if his dad understood.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Phil admitted.

Tommy let out a soft huff of impatience, flicking his tail. There wasn’t a good way to communicate this without speaking, so he wasn’t sure what to do.

Then, an idea came to him.

Tommy stood up again, dashing quickly to his chests once more and pulling out coal. He smeared the coal dust on his fingers, turning to the cave wall and beginning to write.

_same_

He took a step back and away, allowing them to read it. A weird kind of nervous energy ran through him, one he hadn’t felt in a long long time. His handwriting was shit. It seemed to have gotten worse in his isolation. The letters were too close together and they were slanted, making it hard to read even for himself and he was the one that wrote it.

“We’re the same?” Phil questioned. “You mean how we both changed?”

Tommy nodded, rocking back and forth on his feet nervously.

Then, he heard something outside the cave.

Tommy’s head snapped towards the entrance, ears twitching and brows furrowed.

“Tommy?” Tubbo asked, sounding concerned. Tommy just threw up a hand, the universal “wait” gesture. He then put his index finger in front of his lips to signal them to be quiet.

His ears were swiveling and pointed straight up, straining to hear what he’d heard before.

There was breathing, but not outside, inside. He could hear Phil, Wilbur, Tubbo, and Techno breathing.

Fuck, he could hear their HEARTBEATS. How good was his hearing? He was about ten feet from them, and in near silence he could hear their hearts beating.

Don’t focus on that.

He heard the noise outside again. A soft guttural noise, maybe fifty feet or more from the entrance of his cave.

Enderman. Okay. That was fine. As long as it didn’t come inside.

Tommy visibly relaxed, his ears drooping into a more comfortable position and the stiffness of his body melting away. The tension in the air also dropped, and he saw Phil, Tubbo, and Wilbur deflate with sighs of relief. Techno was still stiff, however, eyes locked on Tommy.

“How good is your hearing, Tommy?” Techno asked.

Tommy tilted his head at the question, and shrugged. He smeared more coal dust onto his fingers and began to write again.

_heartbeat_

“Heartbeat,” Phil read aloud, seeming confused.

“Heartbeat?” Tubbo asked, looking at Tommy for clarification.

“You... can hear our heartbeats?” Techno guessed, and Tommy nodded. “From where we’re sitting? Ten feet away?” Another nod.

“Holy shit,” Wilbur gasped.

Tommy shrugged, and then remembered the pot in the fire. The pot that was currently boiling over.

He made a yelping noise, grabbing a wad of wool, scampering over to the fire and pulling out the pot with the wool covering his hands before the water inside could put out the fire. He quickly went outside, plopped the pot into the cold air to cool it down, and went back inside the cave with a sigh of relief.

“We kind of got off topic, I’m realizing,” Tubbo said once Tommy was back inside. “What’s the plan for tomorrow? You show us the way out? Or are you coming with us?”

Tommy stiffened, and he growled softly. He pretended not to notice the way they tensed at the noise he was making as he turned and scrawled on the wall again.

_way out_

Phil, Wilbur, and Tubbo all seemed to visibly deflate at this. Techno seemed unsurprised.

“Tommy-” Phil started, but Tommy just growled louder and pointed to “way out” on the wall.

“Tommy I-” Tubbo tried to say, but Tommy interrupted him with another loud growl. Tubbo’s face hardened. “LISTEN TO ME!”

Tommy flinched, ears ringing and flattening in response to the loudness. He glared at Tubbo, but gestured for him to go ahead.

Tubbo looked apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for calling you selfish. I’m sorry for exiling you. I’m sorry for not visiting. I’m sorry that I let Dream do what he did to you. I’m sorry I left you out here. Everybody thought you were dead, Tommy. I thought you were dead. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

Tommy was silent. Even if he could talk, he wasn’t sure if he would respond. He wasn’t sure how to respond even if he could.

“I know it’s selfish to ask you to come back,” Tubbo had tears in his eyes. “Especially when you seem so much happier here. But I am asking. Please come back, Tommy. Come back with us.”

Tommy still didn’t respond, tail flicking from side to side. He still didn’t know how he was supposed to respond.

Then an idea hit him.

He flipped open one of his chests and pulled out his music disks. The ones he had cherished for so long. The ones he couldn’t even listen to anymore, and he hadn’t even looked at them in months.

Tommy examined the disks for a moment, before walking over to Tubbo and gently placing them in his lap. Tubbo glanced down, running his fingers over the disks in shock.

Unsure of what to do now that he was basically standing in front of him, he awkwardly placed a hand on the top of Tubbo’s head and patted it.

Before Tubbo could say anything, Tommy scampered off to the other side of the room, crawled into his niche, pulled the blankets over himself, closed his eyes and blocked out the world, flattening his ears.

He could still hear them, of course. His ears were useful when hunting and living in a forest alone, but now? Tommy knew that he was never going to fall asleep. To their credit, they were whispering, but he could hear their whispers quite clearly.

* * *

This went on for hours. Tommy desperately wanted to just GO TO SLEEP, but it wasn’t happening. Even when the others eventually fell silent, he couldn’t fall asleep. His body was still tense, expecting danger and not allowing him to rest.

The sun had definitely set by now, as the air was much colder than before. He could hear zombies groaning nearby, but they didn’t often come inside to challenge him, so Tommy wasn’t worried.

Zombies rely on smell rather than sight, you see. They had incredible senses of smell. They could smell humans from up to half a mile away.

Tommy had spent so long in these woods that he smelled like them, as Techno had described earlier. Zombies couldn’t distinguish him from a tree if they couldn’t see him, so he rarely had to deal with them.

The groaning was slowly getting louder, as if the zombies were getting closer. They had no reason to be here. He smeared zombie blood on the entrance to keep them away from his cave for a reason. Zombies would be able to smell dead brethren and had enough brains to stay away.

But here he was, listening to the growls and groans and gurgling noises get steadily louder.

And then he remembered.

The zombies didn’t smell HIM.

They smelled the other four people who were currently in the same room as him.

Tommy sat up, ears perking with furrowed brows. Wilbur and Tubbo were curled up together by the fire, which was burning low but still giving off some heat. Phil was nearby, a wing wrapped around both them and Techno, who was leaning against Phil on his other side.

Techno was a light sleeper, as was Tubbo. Tommy didn’t care if he woke them up.

As much as he hated them, (did he hate them?) he couldn’t just let them DIE. The morally responsible thing would be to protect them from zombies, right?

Here he was arguing with himself over whether to protect them from zombies when he literally fed them FROM HIS OWN STASH, gave them water, lit them a fire, gave Wilbur bandages for his hand.

Tommy had grown soft.

He was supposed to hate them. They abandoned him. But here he was, actually having a heart and fucking caring about their health. Stupid fucking brain.

Tommy slid off his ledge, finding his bow and quiver still slung across his back. His axe was still attached to his belt loop, but he wasn’t planning on using it. He pulled his bow off his back, notching an arrow and pausing for a moment.

Was Techno awake? And staring at him?

Tommy peered into the corner where Techno was. Tommy’s night vision was shit, just like a regular human’s. In the dim light of the fire, he could only see the vague shape of his brother. He had thought for a moment he’d seen the fire reflecting in a pair of eyes, but it was gone now.

The growling zombies drew his attention once more, and Tommy stalked out of the cave in pursuit of the nuisances keeping him awake, tail lashing in annoyance.

It was cloudy, and cold, and dark. Tommy couldn’t see very much, as he had the same amount of vision in the dark as a regular human did.

He paused about twenty feet from the cave, tilting his head and perking his ears to listen for the zombies.

Since it was so dark, he’d have to rely solely on his hearing to do this. A torch would only attract more mobs.

He stood still for a minute or two, listening as the growls grew ever closer. He couldn’t smell them yet, which meant they were still far enough away that he didn’t need the axe.

His tail stilled, and then curled as Tommy turned and released an arrow to his left. Thwip, went the string of his bow as it slammed back into place. Thrwick, went the arrow as it buried into something squishy and wet. Thunk, went the zombie as it crashed to the ground with a growl before falling completely silent.

He heard the other zombies in the area pause and groan, but then their heavy treads pressed onwards, growing closer and closer. Tommy spun in place, reloading quickly. Inhale, exhale— shoot. An arrow going in and a crash. A pause before the zombies keep moving.

This happened over and over again. Tommy released about a dozen or more arrows into the zombies that were drawing ever closer.

His fist closed around air when he tried to reload right as he could smell the last zombie in the vicinity.

Thinking fast, Tommy whipped the zombie across what he hoped was its face with his bow. The zombie fell, groaning, and Tommy readjusted his grip on his bow, plunging the end of his bow where wood met string hard downwards.

There was a loud crunching noise, followed by a squishy sound and something wet splattered on his feet. Tommy yanked the bow upward, finding it harder to lift than before. He pressed his foot against the zombie, presumably its chest, and yanked the bow upward again.

The bow popped free with a squelching sound, and Tommy sighed. He’d have to clean this all up in the morning, what a nightmare. First he’d have to take Phil, Techno, Wilbur, and Tubbo to the edge of the forest tomorrow. Then he’d have to come back, clean up the zombie bodies. At that point it would be dark, so he would have gone two days without hunting. Perfect.

Tommy turned back towards the cave entrance, surprised to find a torch flickering there. The torch was held by Techno, who was staring at him with wide eyes and sword in hand. Phil was next to him, with Wilbur on Phil’s other side. Tubbo was slightly behind them. All four looked bleary with sleep, but stunned expressions lay on their faces.

He slung the bow across his back once more, pointing to where he suspected the zombie corpse to be, tapping his nose, and then pointing to them.

“They smelled us,” Techno guessed, and Tommy nodded.

“More will be here soon, won’t they?” Tubbo asked.

Tommy shook his head silently, and shooed them back inside with tired hands. They went, reluctantly, and Tommy flopped in his niche again with a sigh, this time facing towards them.

He felt utterly exhausted. Today had gone on for far too long, and he was so tired, but adrenaline still beat in his blood. He was still on edge, his body was still too tense. Sleep was not going to come for him, and he knew it.

His eyes were trained on the other four people in his cave as they settled themselves around the fire once more. This time, both Wilbur and Techno leaned up against Phil, who was leaning on the wall, on either side of their father. Tubbo lay on the ground with his head in Phil’s lap and his legs strewn over Wilbur’s. Phil’s wings were, predictably, wrapped around his sons in a protective manner.

Tommy listened as their heartbeats slowed and their breaths became deeper and less frequent. He couldn’t stop thinking about a simpler time, when he would be a part of that pile. When he wasn’t constantly on edge. Before L’manburg, before the disks, before everything. When he could just fall asleep without worrying about nightmares plaguing his nights.

He knew it was a bit creepy, watching his family sleep, longing for times that took place what felt like years ago. He couldn’t help it, really. He wished everything could go back to the way they used to be, but that was never going to happen and he knew it.

Tommy closed his eyes, ears perked slightly as he tried to fall asleep. The heartbeats of Phil, Techno, Tubbo, and Wilbur echoing in his ears, droning on and on and on. Despite everything that Tommy had been through, despite how much he wanted them to leave, their heartbeats were comforting, more relaxing than the music disks had ever been.

* * *

Tommy came to much later, to sunlight pouring into the cave from the entrance and the rancid smell of rotting flesh coming from outside.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and instinctively swiveling his ears to listen for nearby mobs. There was nothing, thank god.

He glanced over at his guests, finding them still asleep in the corner. Tommy crawled out of his niche and stretching, his tail curling as a few little huffs came from his mouth.

Tommy glanced once more at Techno, Wilbur, Tubbo, and Phil, before slipping out of the cave and sighing when he saw the amount of zombie bodies on the ground that he’d have to take care of later. He counted eight, four of which had multiple arrows in them and one that had none.

He bent over and started yanking out arrows of the twice-dead corpses, shoving them back in his quiver. His tail flicked absentmindedly as he did this, chuffing in annoyance slightly when he sank his fingers into a rotting corpse to pull out a particularly stuck arrow.

Tommy almost didn’t notice when he felt eyes on him. But he straightened up, wiping the gore off his fingers with his shirt, and met Techno’s gaze.

“Last night,” Techno said gruffly, expression clearly steeled to hide what he was feeling. “I saw you with the bow and arrow, just staring at us. It looked like you were going to kill us.”

Tommy scoffed, raising an eyebrow at him.

“I guess my question is, why did you put your life on the line like that for us?” Techno asked. “You could have died last night, unable to see how many zombies you were fighting or even tell where they were. You managed to kill them all, I’m guessing because of your ears. What I’m trying to say is, if you really want us gone so badly, why would you put your life in danger to protect us?”

Tommy frowned, glancing away. There wasn’t a way for him to answer that. He didn’t trust his voice to not give out on him if he tried to speak. For some reason, he actually wanted to speak for once.

He shrugged, walking forward until he stood just in front of Techno. He raised two fingers to his brother’s chest and pressed them against the skin above his heart. He then turned the fingers to himself and tapped the same spot on his own chest.

Techno didn’t seem to understand, which, understandable. Tommy reached up and patted the top Techno’s head like he’d done to Tubbo last night, before going back inside the cave.

Wilbur was half asleep and staring at the remains of the fire, which had burned out some time last night. Tubbo had his head buried in Wilbur’s shoulder, snoring softly. Phil was halfway between the entrance and the fire pit, clearly midstep, and pausing when he saw Tommy emerge from outside.

Tommy came in, gathered up some of his canteens, all still mostly full. He passed one to Phil and one to Techno, attaching a third to his hip. He stuffed his quiver with more arrows, and made a loud shrieking sound.

Tubbo and Wilbur both jumped, snapping fully awake in an instant and looking around in confusion. Phil just blinked in surprise, and Techno just raised his eyebrows at him.

Wilbur and Tubbo glanced towards him, and Tommy patted “way out” on the wall, making a softer chuffing noise. He jerked his head to the side, towards the entrance, before slipping out of the cave.

He stopped outside of it, making sure he could hear four sets of footsteps, before he started the six-hour trek towards the edge of the forest.

* * *

The hike had been long, nearing ten hours instead of the usual six hour timeframe that Tommy was used to. Wilbur, Tubbo, Phil and Techno weren’t accustomed to the long treks through the woods as he was, so they took much longer than he would normally do on his own.

But finally, they were there. Tommy could see the ruins of Logstedshire through the trees, and so could the other four.

He paused just short of the tree line, turning towards them with a sad smile. The meaning was clear. He would not be going any farther.

“I guess we can’t convince you to come with us, can we?” Tubbo asked, a tear already slipping down his cheek.

Tommy shook his head, stepping forward and wiping the tear from Tubbo’s cheek. His hand lingered on Tubbo’s face, but he withdrew after a moment.

“I’ll miss you, gremlin child,” Wilbur teased, though he was also tearing up.

Tommy let out an amused series of breaths, reaching up and patting Wilbur on the top of his head affectionately. He ran his fingers through his hair, but stepped back after the brief touch.

He reached Techno, and also patted him on the head, which Techno chuckled at, but didn’t say anything. Tommy’s hand went down and pressed against Techno’s chest above his heart, a silent reminder of their conversation from earlier, before moving on to Phil.

“I can’t suppose I can have a hug?” Phil asked, smiling despite his tears.

Tommy gave him a sad smile and shook his head, but he leaned forward and grabbed Phil’s hands between his and squeezed. His head tilted forward until it bumped with Phil’s, and he heard his father take a shuddering breath as Tommy pulled away after just a few moments.

He went back down to Tubbo and held out a hand. Tubbo currently had both of the compasses around his neck, but didn’t seem to understand what Tommy was asking for. That is, until Tommy reached forward and tapped the one that had “Your Tubbo” engraved on it.

Tubbo removed the compass and placed it in Tommy’s hand. Tommy smiled and nodded approvingly, securing the necklace compass around his neck.

“You need me,” Tommy whispered in a broken, hoarse voice that was barely audible with its lack of use. “Always here.” He tapped the compass around his neck and then tapped the one around Tubbo’s.

Tubbo burst into tears, and though Tommy wanted to, he couldn’t force himself to pull him into a hug. He just leaned forward and bumped his forehead with Tubbo’s, before stepping back and tilting his head towards the ruins of Logstedshire.

The four turned towards the ruins, and Tommy could tell they were about to leave when he heard something.

His head swiveled, ears perking in alarm as he heard the faint whistling of an arrow fly through the air. Towards Wilbur.

Tommy gave the same shrill warning call as he used before, the one that meant there was danger.

He dove in front of Wilbur.

A familiar burn etched its way through his ribs, but Tommy didn’t hesitate in drawing his bow and sending an arrow through the skull of the skeleton who’d fired. The skeleton collapsed to the ground, and Tommy followed shortly after, gasping for breath around the arrow in between his ribs.

Multiple pairs of hands caught him, and supported him as Tommy coughed, something wet and warm in the back of his throat splattering onto his shirt. It tasted metallic and gross, and he knew what it was. Blood.

He could see his family talking, but he couldn’t hear them. His ears were ringing, and he wasn’t sure why. For once, he truly was thrust into mostly silence.

Phil pushed Tommy’s hair out of his face, and Tubbo clutched his hand tightly. Wilbur was talking with Techno frantically, as Techno put pressure on the wound. Phil seemed to be saying something reassuring, while Tubbo seemed to be begging. Probably begging for him to not die.

Tommy gave them a weak, probably bloody smile as his vision went dark.

* * *

His eyes blinked open, and his ears swiveled as he tried to remember where he was.

The rock beneath him was quite soft, and there was no cave ceiling above him like there should be. Instead, there was wooden roof.

Tommy could hear breathing, and several heartbeats nearby, but everything else around him was mostly silent.

He turned his head and took in his surroundings.

He was in a kitchen of some sort, on a bed. Phil was sleeping in a chair next to his bed, and Wilbur was stretched out on a couch nearby. Tubbo was sleeping on the floor with a blanket wrapped around him, using a sleeping Techno’s lap as a pillow.

He didn’t recognize this house, though despite his instinctual fear of being somewhere he didn’t know, he was calm.

Tommy wasn’t alone. His family was with him.

Even after everything that they’d done to him, everything he’d been through with them, maybe there were things better than solitude.

**Author's Note:**

> HOOO BOY THIS ONE TOOK SO FUCKING LONG.
> 
> This is the one that’s been taking up the most of my time. If you follow me on Twitter, you know it as “77777777”. She’s almost twice as large as “the beast”.
> 
> I think I rushed the ending a lot, but I really just wanted to be done with this and get it out of my drafts. I’ve been working on this for a week and a half. I’m so glad it’s finally done. 
> 
> I meant to post this yesterday as a Merry Crisis present, but AO3 wasn’t working last night for me. So, here it is a day later than I planned!
> 
> I’m gonna go take a nap now.
> 
> -R
> 
> Twitter: @Rose12610  
> Tumblr: @alwaysananxiousmess


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